Requiem for Sepia Mutiny

Back in 2004, when Carmen and Jen ran Mixed Media Watch on Xanga, and when I had just abandoned the boards on Bolt for Otakudom, Sepia Mutiny was forming like Voltron. A search for their first post leads me to this:

i’m brown irish, actually.

Posted on July 30, 2004 by A N N A

there once was a group of brown nerds who spent all their time toying with words they all loved to blog (some from a city with fog) b/c let’s face it, a social life’s for the birds.

(mc sharaabi, out)

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And so it went.

For the last eight years, Sepia has brought an unapologetically brown view on politics and pop culture, with amazing insight and fresh perspectives. Sepia Mutiny was regular reading over here at Racialicious – even though either Abhi or Amardeep totally played us when we asked them to cross post content. (The exact wording was something like “If you guys were CNN or something, sure, but you’re too small so we don’t see the point.” Yes, I’m still a little salty four years later.)

Bruised ego aside, we kept on reading anyway because you just can’t ignore that type of talent. And they assembled an amazing crew, especially with women like Anna, Taz, and Phillygrrl rocking the mic. But unfortunately, it’s the end of an era.

Abhi wrote the official announcement, noting:

This decision will likely not come as a shock to some of you and may even be somewhat expected by others. For our more recent readers I apologize that you discovered us only as this party was winding down. Although we all still love our work on SM, the blogosphere has evolved quite a bit since we first started and for a variety of reasons SM has not been able to keep up in recent years so as to remain a cutting edge product both from a content and technological standpoint. Most of the conversation that once took place daily on blogs now takes place on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. To try and fight that trend is a losing proposition. Almost all prominent blogs are now corporatized with actual budgets, so continuing to play in that shrinking sandbox doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I don’t think any of us who have poured so much sweat and so many sleepless nights writing about issues we are passionate about or just fascinated by are happy with simply coasting by on past glory.

All of us have also gotten older since we started. Some got married, some had kids, and all of us have super demanding day jobs (watch 60 Minutes this Sunday if you want to know why I haven’t been blogging much for the last two years). I have loved reading emails from people who think all of us do this full time. We wish!

Abhi is right – readers don’t seem to make a distinction between independent blogs and supported blogs, but for those of us on the back-end it cannot be understated. Way too many of us doing social justice and identity work are doing this in the off hours, the times when we should be sleeping, the times when our patient loved ones put up with us pounding out posts and moderating comments instead of spending time with them. And as our relationships change, families expand, and work increases, we start wondering if we can balance it all. Most people don’t realize that running a blog is an expensive proposition, both from a time and financial perspective. There is this assumption that if we are putting out consistent content, then we are funded and are therefore asked to keep pace with blogs that pay people a decent wage to sit in front of their computer all day and wait for shit to happen.

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